Mayor Jim Suttle announced today that the City of Omaha, in partnership with the City of Lincoln, will receive $10 million from the Recovery Act Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Ramp-Up Program. The application, titled the Omaha Lincoln Retrofit Ramp-Up Program, leverages resources amounting to $100 million leveraged from 27 partners across both communities to assist in the successful implementation of this program.
A key strategy of the program is to create targeted “Green Zones” for the cities to deploy comprehensive building retrofits, to include residential, commercial and public buildings. Overall, the goal of the program is to create a sustainable retrofit market focusing on the areas of: workforce development, green technology and entrepreneurship, consumer information, financial mechanisms, neighborhood advocacy, and market strategy.
The partnership between Omaha and Lincoln, including the community partners, will catalyze the region’s energy efficiency market by benefitting Nebraska’s workforce, contractors, consumers, financial lending institutions, utilities, government agencies, and supplying them with the tools needed to make Omaha and Nebraska a leader in green industry.
“I am excited to learn that the City of Omaha, in partnership with the City of Lincoln, will have the opportunity to jump-start our community’s energy efficiency through retrofitting,” said Omaha Mayor Jim Suttle. “The educational and business opportunities that will result from this grant will leave a mark on our community for years to come. This will be the beginning of major changes for our City and for our energy consumption.”
“This grant is a tremendous recognition by the Department of Energy of the region’s leadership potential in the energy efficiency markets,” said Lincoln Mayor Chris Beutler. “The public/private partnerships that will be fostered as a result of this funding will be models for the rest of the country. And most importantly, the energy and cost savings that thousands of Omaha and Lincoln residents and businesses will realize from this project will help everyone’s bottom lines for years to come.”
“I’d like to thank our partners who have dedicated the resources and time to this effort,” Mayor Suttle said. “We are looking forward to getting started on this project and announcing details to the community in the coming weeks and months.”
This program would not be possible without the continued support and advocacy from US Senator Ben Nelson on the 2009 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “I thank Senator Nelson for his support of this important legislation that will have great benefits for all Omahans for many years to come,” said Mayor Suttle.
Omaha and Lincoln were one of twenty-five communities selected nationwide for the program.
